Though Cowards Flinch

At 12.04pm today during PMQs with Nick Clegg, David Burrowes, the Tory MP for Enfield Southgate, asked if there is “light at the end of the tunnel” for Gary Mckinnon – a constituent of his.

Clegg’s answer was a flat, prepared response: Cameron and Obama “hope to find a way forward”.

Mckinnon has found his name back in the papers since Cameron’s first visit to see Obama as Prime Minister, and it has not been short of optimistic responses; not least from Mackinnon’s Mother, Janis Sharp.

She commented that Cameron’s visit was a “landmark” moment:

I’m very proud that David Cameron has the guts to stand up for a British citizen – it’s wonderful. Our hopes are that a trial will happen in the UK and there’s much more chance of that now … It’s not over yet but it has given us hope.

During an interview with GMTV, she also stated that “It was amazing that we’ve now got someone brave enough in government to actually stand up for British citizens and to raise it with Obama.”

This shouldn’t offend anyone anymore than Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, who as Sharp seems to imply in the quote above with the telling use of the word “now”, was not brave enough to stand up for a British citizen – surely some clarity is needed here of what she means by this.

What people will think this means is Johnson made no effort to see the most just result in the Mckinnon case. But Johnson last year rightly warned that Mckinnon could legally be extradited to the US for crimes considered akin to terrorism – this is not a lie, yet it seems to have confused some.

Mckinnon claims to have wanted to check for UFO documents, but this is not the whole story by any means. During a period of hacking, Mckinnon posted a message on an army website the following:

US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days … It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year … I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.

The allegations held by the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) are not related to “a few isolated and chance examples of hacking”, as legal blogger Jack of Kent reminds, “but instead to a sustained hacking exercise which took place over fourteen months and involving 96 computers in five US government departments, and which came to an end (it seems) only with his detection and arrest.”

When Johnson was home secretary Mckinnon’s lawyers were permitted to carry out a judicial review into whether the decision breached his human rights.

It is still this which encapsulates the argument against extradition of Mckinnon, but as I have shown before, in response to research carried out by Jack of Kent, should not be of concern at all.

The process of the extradition would be as follows:

Two Deputy US Marshals would go to the UK, pick up McKinnon and transport him back to the US. At least one of those Marshals would be qualified as an emergency medical technician, or if the UK covered the costs, a UK psychiatric professional could assist in the extradition. Upon arrival McKinnon would be transported to Alexandria Adult Detention Center (AADC) with psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and staff able to carry out medical and mental-health examinations.

If found guilty, a pre-sentence report would be made of McKinnon before the court makes an appropriate sentence based in consideration of his medical reports. If McKinnon faced prison, he would be entitled to a stay in a facility “which would provide such care and supervision” as stated above.

Paragraph 83 runs through the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) psychology services, which would cater for all of McKinnon’s mental-health needs.

The Extradition Act 2003 had not been prepared in time to be legible to Mckinnon’s crimes, but even if it had, the then home office minister John Denham assured parliament that “no one will be extradited for conduct that takes place lawfully in this country”.

Hacking is neither lawful in this country nor the US, though the gulf between prison sentences is far wider; it is this, along with “human rights” issues, which has spurred on opposition against the extradition, and not appeals questioning its legality.

The only light at the end of the tunnel for Mckinnon, to paraphrase David Burrowes, will be if Cameron and Obama change legal laws and the terms for extradition on the back foot – which may end up actually happening.

Unfortunately for them Abu Hamza is currently fighting the same battle, and will thus be used as an argument that the US, UK and European courts take preferential treatment to Hamza over a hacker (the type of which has already been used by the Mail).

Hamza’s lawyers argue that if he is sent to the US he will be treated “inhumanely”, though if evidence for this is based on similar grounds as that of Mckinnon, it begs for more scrutiny.

 Save for the unnecessary bombast of the title, David Blackburn has a point when he argues that: “it is absolutely incontrovertible that all are equal before the law; it should not privilege religious fanatics.”

Of course there is no evidence that our judicial system privileges religious fanatics, but it is a job trying to find the rationale here.

Nonetheless, the decision on Makinnon’s fate, far from being the difference between a politician willing to stand up for a British citizen and one who won’t, is actually the difference between a politician who can bend the law and one who refuses to.